Stepping Up for Community Colleges

Transcription

1 U N D E R S T A N D I N G B O S T O N Stepping Up for Community Colleges Building on the Momentum to Improve Student Success in Massachusetts Prepared by Richard Kazis Lara Couturier Jobs for the Future Prepared for The Boston Foundation March 2013

2 About the Boston Foundation The Boston Foundation, Greater Boston s community foundation, is one of the oldest and largest community foundations in the nation, with net assets of more than $800 million. In 2012, the Foundation and its donors made $88 million in grants to nonprofit organizations and received gifts of close to $60 million. The Foundation is a partner in philanthropy, with some 900 separate charitable funds established by donors either for the general benefit of the community or for special purposes. The Boston Foundation also serves as a major civic leader, provider of information, convener and sponsor of special initiatives that address the region s most pressing challenges. The Philanthropic Initiative (TPI), an operating unit of the Foundation, designs and implements custom philanthropic strategies for families, foundations and corporations around the globe. Through its consulting and field-advancing efforts, TPI has influenced billions of dollars in giving worldwide. For more information about the Boston Foundation and TPI, visit or call About Jobs for the Future Jobs for the Future is committed to achieving the promise of economic mobility by redesigning education and aligning it with family-sustaining careers. We work with our partners to develop and drive the adoption of education and career pathways leading from college readiness to career advancement for those struggling to succeed in today s economy. Our work focuses on ensuring that: low-income high school students graduate ready for college and careers; lower-skilled adults can earn a college degree or credential of value in the labor market; employers have the skilled workers they need to stay competitive; and federal and state policies are in place to support these innovations. For more on Jobs for the Future, visit About the Authors Richard Kazis is Senior Vice President of Jobs for the Future. He leads JFF s national policy and advocacy activities, including state-level initiatives to improve community college outcomes for low-income students. A graduate of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Richard has taught at a high school for returning dropouts, helped organize fast-food workers, managed a cooperative urban food wholesaler, and built labor-environmental jobs coalitions. He serves on the board of the Institute for College Access and Success. Lara Couturier directs research and publications for Jobs for the Future s Postsecondary State Policy Network, which includes 11 states that are working to improve student success. Before JFF, Lara was interim principal investigator for the Futures Project: Policy for Higher Education in a Changing World at Brown University. A consulting editor and feature contributor for Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, Lara earned a Ph.D. in history from Brown University. UNDERSTANDING BOSTON is a series of forums, educational events and research sponsored by the Boston Foundation to provide information and insight into issues affecting Boston, its neighborhoods and the region. By working in collaboration with a wide range of partners, the Boston Foundation provides opportunities for people to come together to explore challenges facing our constantly changing community and to develop an informed civic agenda. Visit to learn more about Understanding Boston and the Boston Foundation. Design: Kate Canfield, Canfield Design Cover Photo: Richard Howard 2013 by The Boston Foundation. All rights reserved.

3 Stepping Up for Community Colleges Building on the Momentum to Improve Student Success in Massachusetts Authors Richard Kazis, Jobs for the Future Lara Couturier, Jobs for the Future Editor Barbara Hindley, The Boston Foundation Prepared for The Boston Foundation

4 Preface In November of 2011, the Boston Foundation published a report titled The Case for Community Colleges: Aligning Higher Education and Workforce Needs in Massachusetts. We commissioned the study because we and many of our colleagues in the business and civic communities are deeply concerned about the mismatch between the middleskilled jobs that are going unfilled in Massachusetts and the opportunities that higher education has especially community colleges for preparing workers for those jobs. The report called for building a system that will leverage the capacity of community colleges to become true leaders in meeting the workforce needs of the Commonwealth. Its recommendations included clarifying the mission of community colleges, with a priority on preparing students to meet critical labor market needs; strengthening the system s governance and accountability; stabilizing state funding; and forming a community college coalition. Many of the recommendations were embraced by Governor Patrick and included in his State of the State address in January of One week after his address, the Boston Foundation convened the Coalition FOR Community Colleges a remarkably diverse group of 62 Massachusetts civic, community and business organizations that want to see community colleges live up to their potential for all students. And in July of 2012, the Governor signed a state budget that empowered the Commissioner of Higher Education to lead the development of a revamped funding formula for our state s 15 community colleges that takes performance into account. Among other advances, the budget also called for the establishment of a job-training clearinghouse and $11 million in increased financial support for the entire system. We are deeply gratified by all of the progress that has been made in little over a year and are especially thankful for the leadership of community college presidents and the work they are doing together. Now we are proud to publish this report, Stepping Up for Community Colleges: Building on the Momentum to Improve Student Success in Massachusetts. It was researched and written by Jobs for the Future, our longtime partner in Achieving the Dream, an initiative that focuses on helping students succeed in our country s community colleges. The authors, Richard Kazis and Lara Couturier, are national experts on college success and career readiness. We asked them to focus on issues related to developmental programs and to explore promising models for transferring credits within state systems. The timing was just right. There is an emerging national consensus about the next steps community colleges can take to improve the experiences of new students, including an examination of the ways in which they are assessed and placed into remedial programs. And a number of innovative colleges, here and around the country, and even entire systems, are experimenting with new approaches to enhancing the student experience and improving college persistence and completion. Many of the strategies you will read about here show tremendous promise for increasing outcomes for low-income and underprepared students who are seeking to improve their skills and, ultimately, their prospects for success in today s economy. The Boston Foundation believes that their future success means our future success, both as a caring community and as a Commonwealth. Paul S. Grogan President and CEO The Boston Foundation 2 Understanding Boston

5 Contents Executive Summary... 5 Introduction...11 CHAPTER ONE The Current Moment in Community College Reform in Massachusetts The Evolution of the Community College Reform Agenda in Massachusetts Where Does Massachusetts Stand in Community College Outcomes? CHAPTER TWO Emerging National Consensus on Next Steps to Improve Student Outcomes...17 High Attrition in Developmental Education Sequence...18 Deep Flaws in Assessment/Placement System...20 It Takes Too Long to Choose a Program and It s Too Hard to Stay on Track...21 A Short Guide to Research Informing an Emerging National Consensus...24 CHAPTER THREE State Strategies to Promote Better Outcomes Strategies for Reducing High Attrition in Developmental Education Strategies for Improving the Placement/Assessment System Strategies for Improving and Accelerating Program Choice and Completion CHAPTER FOUR Recommendations Fully and effectively implement two high-leverage reforms initiated in 2012 performance-based funding and developmental education redesign Expand access to structured pathways to credentials and reduce the complexity of navigating program and course options Identify and remove barriers to innovation and pursuit of the completion agenda Support sustained advocacy for community college student success Conclusion Resources Endnotes Stepping Up: Building on the Momentum to Improve Student Success in Massachusetts Community Colleges 3

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7 Executive Summary Efforts to improve outcomes for Massachusetts community college students have accelerated dramatically in recent years. An intensified sense of urgency has united the Governor, the Massachusetts Department of Higher Education, the legislature, community college leaders, major employers and a number of other stakeholders. Institutions and state agencies have responded with significant innovation and reform. The student success and college completion agenda has begun to get traction as a way to address the pressing needs of both underprepared students and the state s employers and communities. Urgency has been joined with opportunity. The Commonwealth is well positioned for the next round of reform and innovation, and the national student success movement has reached a new level of sophistication and built an experience base to inform specific, evidencebased recommendations. Jobs for the Future prepared this report to inform and support that next phase of community college improvement in the Commonwealth. It is based on an appraisal of Massachusetts s accomplishments and progress as well as an honest assessment of remaining gaps and shortcomings. It looks at the strategies and priorities of some of the most innovative states, systems and colleges around the nation and suggests next steps for Massachusetts colleges and for state officials. The Evolution of the Community College Reform Agenda in Massachusetts In recent years, Massachusetts has mobilized around an increasingly ambitious agenda for more credential completion, smoother transfer and a greater contribution from community colleges to the state s economic well-being. In 2007, Massachusetts became one of 15 states to join Achieving the Dream, a national reform network that is helping community colleges around the country improve student success, using data on student performance to develop specific, targeted strategies that improve persistence and completion. In January of 2009, Governor Deval Patrick appointed Richard Freeland as Commissioner of the Department of Higher Education, and several important changes followed: reports detailing the performance of public school graduates at Massachusetts colleges and universities; a comprehensive measure of community college success that was incorporated into annual performance reporting; and the creation of MassTransfer to help students navigate the complexities of transferring from two- to fouryear institutions. In 2010, Massachusetts signed onto Complete College America s agenda for policy action to increase completion rates for two- and four-year public institutions. That same year, the Board of Higher Education approved the Vision Project, a new public higher education agenda for Massachusetts. The declared goal is to produce the nation s best-educated citizenry and workforce in response to intensifying interstate economic competition and the growing importance of public education to the Commonwealth s future. The Vision Project has become the organizing umbrella for a set of high-leverage, statewide improvement initiatives. Its metrics and public reporting of outcomes now guide the institutions. In 2011, the reform agenda got more support. The Vision Project published baseline performance data on Massachusetts public higher education. A Boston Foundation report, The Case for Community Colleges: Aligning Higher Education and Workforce Needs in Massachusetts, called for action to address the mismatch between middleskilled jobs that are going unfilled in the Massachusetts economy and the opportunities offered by higher education to prepare workers to fill those needs with a particular focus on community colleges. Governor Patrick proposed changes in governance, funding and accountability for the state s community colleges that were signed into law in the 2013 budget. The state s community colleges recently united to secure a highly competitive $20 million grant from the U.S. Department of Labor to accelerate the attainment of degrees, certificates and industry credentials among low-income, low- Stepping Up: Building on the Momentum to Improve Student Success in Massachusetts Community Colleges 5

8 skill adults across all 15 community colleges, confirming their progress and commitment to continuous improvement and systemic change, a stronger relationship with regional economies and an increasingly unified vision for the future. Where Does Massachusetts Stand in Community College Outcomes? There was a time when the future health of the state s economy did not depend significantly upon the products of public higher education. Those days are over. Today, more than half of all Massachusetts undergraduates attend public two- and four-year institutions, compared to only 30 percent in And three out of four associate degree holders in the state earned their credentials from public community colleges. But in terms of higher education results, Massachusetts typically sits in the middle of the pack on key performance metrics. When Massachusetts students arrive at community colleges, for example, 65 percent require remedial education in math or reading, around the national average. On the federal government s threeyear IPEDS graduation rate for community college degree students, Massachusetts colleges place 30th in the nation. Massachusetts is also in the middle of the pack or lower when it comes to public funding, as measured in terms of state funds per full-time equivalent student or per $1,000 of personal income. In the coming years, demographic changes in the state will make it difficult to raise completion rates markedly, if at all, through incremental, modest improvements. Between 2000 and 2010, population growth in the Commonwealth was due solely to the growth of the Hispanic population. And the college-readiness gap between Massachusetts white and Hispanic 12th graders is about 28 to 29 percentage points, much higher than in many states. Community college graduation rates for white students are more than double those of Hispanics, only 8.6 percent of whom earn degrees, placing the state 35th on this metric among the 40 states with more than one public community college. Given the demographic and competitive challenges facing Massachusetts, implementing the reforms of recent years is both quite necessary and also insufficient. Our state s community colleges must leapfrog their peers in other states to achieve much better outcomes for an increasingly diverse and at-risk population of students and an increasingly demanding and globallycompetitive community of employers. The Emerging National Consensus on Next Steps to Improve Student Outcomes Across the country, innovative colleges and state higher education systems are testing new approaches to improving student persistence and attainment. There is a particular focus on affordable strategies that can increase outcomes for low-income and underprepared youth and adults seeking to improve their skills and economic prospects. Research and experience are yielding a broad consensus on priorities for the next phase of this needed national effort, a consensus that is consistent with lessons from and progress in Massachusetts. This emerging consensus centers on three findings: Boutique programs and pilot projects that reach a small segment of an institution s or a state s community college students cannot generate large-scale improvement or dramatically different performance. The front end of the college experience assessment and placement, orientation and advising, developmental education, initial course selection and success is a critical area for improved processes, new approaches and innovation. Getting students over the initial hump, i.e., the first year and developmental education, is not enough. Institutional and program redesign must address the many ways and moments across the entire community college experience when students lose momentum and fall off track for completion and achievement of their educational goals. A solid body of well-designed research has dramatically altered the national discussion about obstacles facing underprepared community college students and solutions that can dramatically increase completion and success rates. Figure 1 briefly summarizes the most important recent research and its implications for state and institutional reform efforts. This rich body of research has led states and community colleges to focus on three interrelated obstacles to student success and on innovative solutions and 6 Understanding Boston

9 Research Finding Figure 1 Research Influencing the National Discussion Strategies and Responses Students who accumulate credits and enter a program of study early meet with better outcomes. Students need more structure, fewer options and frequent feedback. The effectiveness of traditional developmental education is unclear. Not all academic programs and careers require the same skills. Assessment tests are high stakes, and they are not the best predictors of success in college. Interventions are expensive, but there is evidence that they lower cost-per-completion. Small college-level pilots are difficult to scale up. College programs should align with workforce needs, and students should understand career outcomes. College programs should align with the requirements for transfer with junior standing, and students should take courses that count toward their major. Move students into program streams and encourage them to declare majors early. Streamline curricula; add mandatory orientation, proactive advising and educational planning. Reduce, accelerate, and contextualize developmental education. Build multiple, differentiated pathways aligned with the requirements of academic programs and careers. Use multiple measures to place students, and change test conditions to increase awareness and allow preparation and retest. Make the case for up-front investments that lead to higher completion. Begin interventions at scale. Use labor market information when designing programs and to improve career advising. Faculty disciplinary teams build core curricula for program streams that introduce students to a field and lead students to the goal of choosing a major. reforms designed to make a difference, at scale, to student completion and success: The weak performance of and high attrition rate from traditional developmental education courses and programs; Serious flaws in the way that students are assessed and placed into remediation or college-level courses; and The high cost of the current laissez-faire approach to structuring students choices of program and plans for succeeding in and after college. Strategies for Reducing High Attrition in Developmental Education: Reduce Time in Developmental Coursework and Strengthen Support in First College-level Courses Research findings that only 25 percent of developmental students complete a credential within eight years have raised questions about the overall effectiveness of typical developmental education programming, which is characterized by a set of stand-alone sequential courses. The very structure of the program is too often an obstacle to success: In one national study, almost half of those who failed to complete their developmental sequences and move on to a college-level course did not fail individual courses, but failed to enroll in the next course after successfully passing a lower level developmental course. Stepping Up: Building on the Momentum to Improve Student Success in Massachusetts Community Colleges 7

10 In response, many college and state-level reforms focus on time how long it takes students to get through the sequence and structure the ways that multiple, successive courses offer students too many opportunities to leave college before starting their program of choice. State systems and individual colleges, including many colleges in Massachusetts, are experimenting with innovations designed to move students through developmental education faster, reduce the number of exit points, embed basic skills instruction in college-level content and build student supports into those courses. In the body of the report, two noteworthy models are highlighted: the Accelerated Learning Program of the Community College of Baltimore County and the New Mathways Project created by the Charles A. Dana Center at the University of Texas at Austin. Strategies for Improving the Placement/ Assessment Systems: Minimize Unnecessary Placement in Developmental Education Recent research has cast serious doubt upon the accuracy and efficacy of the typical community college assessment and placement process. The tests, used alone as a one-size-fits-all approach to placement in developmental or college-level courses, appear to be poor predictors of how students will perform in college classes. In addition, the tendency for colleges to signal to students that placement tests are a low-stakes assessment does a real disservice. If a student does not take the test seriously, performs poorly and must take several semesters of developmental coursework, the stakes are quite high as is the cost. As research upends old assumptions, exciting approaches for placing students more effectively are emerging, including allowing students to prepare for and retake tests; rewriting and customizing tests to better align with local curricula; and right-sizing the power of the tests by combining them with other measures, such as high school grades and GPAs. Of particular interest are two large-scale efforts to improve placement and assessment, both of which are highlighted in the report: the placement redesign work of Long Beach (California) City College and of the North Carolina Community College System. Strategies for Improving and Accelerating Program Choice and Completion: Promote More Structured Pathways to Credentials and Transfer Emerging research has identified another key obstacle to student success that is part of the routine operation of most community colleges: that is the overwhelming complexity of choices that face students when they first enroll and the paucity of clear, efficient pathways to high-value credentials. According to this research, students need fewer choices, more structure, and much better guidance to enter a program of study early in their academic career. Bold new approaches to introducing and guiding students to more structured pathways, with fewer electives and a more focused progression to completion, are being tested around the country. The eight campuses of Miami Dade College, which represent Florida in a national completion initiative called Completion By Design, are implementing an ambitious plan to put in place the building blocks for more structured pathways, including: a comprehensive intake process; accelerated and contextualized developmental education; curricular reviews by faculty in particular disciplines to streamline programs and smooth transfer; more proactive advising and academic planning for students; and the organization of broad student-centered communities of interest (e.g., business, health) designed to help students narrow their interests and select majors faster. City University of New York s Accelerated Study in Associates Programs (ASAP) is another large-scale effort to propel students from entry through completion by strengthening wrap-around academic and other support services, requiring full-time enrollment and rapid completion of developmental course requirements, offering majors with limited electives that students take with a cohort of other new students and meeting financial need. Promising models like these are building on the best research about what works in spurring student success and are designing comprehensive strategies to put students on structured pathways to credentials with clear value for the workforce or transfer and to keep them there. 8 Understanding Boston

11 Recommendations: Sustaining the Momentum for Better Results Massachusetts community colleges and higher education officials are part of the national movement for improved community college student outcomes and institutional performance. Last year, the Governor s budget and the legislative decisions on funding and other priorities for community colleges accelerated what had been a steady momentum for improvement. That momentum has not peaked. The following recommendations, if implemented, would enable the state and its institutions to build on last year s actions and progress. Implementing them would greatly increase the likelihood of the state moving from the middle of the pack nationally in terms of community college outcomes and persistent achievement gaps to become the national leader that its residents and employers expect and need it to be. At the core of these recommendations is the belief that siloed, incremental change is not enough. The key to better outcomes for Massachusetts students and regional economies is to redesign the community college experience so that every aspect of it is about helping students make informed choices about their educational program, make those choices early in their academic careers, and then do what needs to be done to earn credentials and further their education or career. 1. Fully and effectively implement two high-leverage reforms initiated in 2012 performance-based funding and developmental education redesign. Performance funding: In the FY 2014 budget, the legislature should adopt the performance-based funding formula developed by the Board of Higher Education. Most states that are pursuing ambitious, large-scale higher education reform strategies are turning to performance funding to motivate and accelerate better educational and economic outcomes. To compete effectively under this new funding system, colleges should receive opportunities to learn about evidence-based strategies for improving their students outcomes. Redesign of developmental education: The Task Force on Transforming Developmental Math Education should advocate a bold plan to redesign developmental math so that many fewer students are placed in developmental courses as a default, remedial instruction is built into college-level courses for many more students and multiple rigorous math pathways are created to align with the math requirements of particular programs of study and majors. Developmental English should undergo a similar redesign. As a part of developmental education reform, the Board of Higher Education should identify and implement changes to existing placement and assessment policies to reduce the number of students who are placed into developmental education unnecessarily. Recommended changes include using multiple measures to determine placement, including high school GPA for younger students, and clearer instructions to students about the test and the value of preparing for it. 2. Expand access to structured pathways to credentials and reduce the complexity of navigating program and course options. More useful information, better advising: Significant improvement in student progress and completion will require reducing the complexity of navigating the community college experience. Too many options, too little advice and guidance, too little attention to process improvements these obstacles need to be tackled through the promotion of efficient, structured program options and high-quality information for incoming students about their options. To promote and drive this kind of reengineering, the Massachusetts Department of Higher Education (MDHE) and the state s community colleges could start by providing students with far better information and advice about programs, their requirements, and the labor market outcomes students can expect upon completion. Incentives for quicker decisions and routes to completion: Colleges and the Department should also reduce the number of poorly aligned and bewildering program and course options students face and help students make choices that move them more quickly to coherent programs of study. Some schools and state systems are narrowing options and electives within programs, reducing the number of program options available, and grouping majors in ways that align courses more efficiently. The state could also take steps to require students to choose a broad program of study early, and then a major at the end of the first year. Stepping Up: Building on the Momentum to Improve Student Success in Massachusetts Community Colleges 9

12 Clearer transfer pathways: In recent years, the MDHE has laid the groundwork for significant improvements in the transfer process that should be continued. An important next step is for the MDHE to incent collaboration between faculty from two-year and four-year institutions to define streamlined general education cores mapped to particular program areas, such as liberal arts, business, or health sciences. The goal is to offer a more directed experience for students, eliminate the confusion created by too many choices and too little guidance, and ensure courses will be accepted for transfer and importantly count toward a student s major at their four-year institution. Shorter-term, stackable career and technical credentials with clear links to jobs: Massachusetts community colleges should create and align a more transparent set of pathways to credentials that are tied to both student demand and employer needs, and reflect the best research on student needs for structure, support and streamlined programs. The Commonwealth s community colleges will soon benefit from a workforce-focused fund created with part of the initial licensing fees for the state s new casino gambling venues. These new resources should be used to promote more diverse, efficient pathways to high-demand occupations. 3. Identify and remove barriers to innovation and pursuit of the completion agenda. Comprehensive policy audit: The MDHE should conduct or commission a careful review of existing state laws and policies that shape community college institutional incentives and actions. A comprehensive policy audit would help spark discussion of key obstacles to dramatic improvement and of strategies to remove or reduce these obstacles. If well designed, it could generate a consensus on how certain laws and rules should be changed to promote more and larger-scale innovation. 4. Support sustained advocacy for community college student success. New statewide cross-college voice for improving student outcomes: Massachusetts should support consistent, focused cross-college collaboration to accelerate and strengthen innovative approaches to improving student outcomes. Several states, particularly those that, like Massachusetts, have relatively decentralized governance of their community colleges, have found it advantageous to create Centers for Student Success, relatively autonomous from the state authorities and the colleges lobbying efforts, and charged by college leaders to accelerate cross-institution learning about evidence-based practices, advocate for long-term support for the success agenda and align diverse innovations to maximize their statewide impact. Institutionalized stakeholders advocacy coalition: The Coalition FOR Community Colleges, with members representing a broad set of statewide advocates and stakeholders focused on education and employment, should be sustained as a statewide voice, independent yet supportive of the colleges and their efforts to improve student outcomes. Conclusion The recognition that Massachusetts and its residents need the state s community colleges to produce many more well-prepared graduates is now widespread and the appetite for innovation and improvement is growing. Recent actions taken by the Governor, the Legislature, the Department of Higher Education and the state s 15 community colleges have laid the groundwork for innovation. The time to step up and lead is now. State officials and key advocates for Massachusetts s economic vitality should pursue and encourage four priorities: 1) ensure that performance funding and developmental education reform are fully and effectively implemented; 2) take action to improve students ability to choose, navigate, enter and complete structured community college pathways to high-value credentials; 3) undertake a careful review of policies that hinder this agenda; and 4) support and sustain a strong statewide voice in support of community college improvement and innovation. The opportunity for progress is clear and compelling and the potential rewards to students, employers and Massachusetts communities call for continued bold and creative leadership going forward. 10 Understanding Boston

13 Introduction The past few years have been a period of dramatic acceleration in Massachusetts s efforts to improve community college student outcomes. An intensified sense of urgency has united the Governor, the Legislature, the Massachusetts Department of Higher Education, lead employers, individual college leaders and numerous other stakeholders. Both institutions and state agencies have responded to this sense of urgency with significant innovation and reform. The student success and college completion agenda has begun to gain real traction in Massachusetts, particularly as it relates to the challenge of underprepared students and the economic needs of the state, its employers and communities. This report: Frames the challenge and the way forward for Massachusetts community colleges, based on the latest and most authoritative national research; Highlights and describes evidence-based solutions being implemented by innovative colleges and states; and Suggests priority next steps for the Commonwealth in driving and supporting improved completion and student success outcomes across all 15 Massachusetts community colleges. Importantly, the momentum for reform has not peaked. If anything, urgency has been joined with a sense of opportunity. The Commonwealth, its political and civic leaders and its community colleges, are well positioned for a next round of reform and innovation. The timing is right, for the national student success movement has simultaneously reached a new level of sophistication and experience to inform specific, evidence-based recommendations. This round of reform is likely to be less contentious than the 2012 battle over governance, funding formulas and other changes. And, if it goes well, it could be a potent driver for dramatically improved institutional practice and performance. This paper is written to inform and support this next phase of community college improvement in the Commonwealth. It is based on an appraisal of Massachusetts s accomplishments and progress to date, but also an honest assessment of the gaps and shortcomings that remain. The authors look at the strategies and priorities of the most innovative states, systems and colleges around the nation and suggest next steps for Massachusetts colleges and for state officials. Stepping Up: Building on the Momentum to Improve Student Success in Massachusetts Community Colleges 11

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15 CHAPTER ONE The Current Moment in Community College Reform in Massachusetts The Evolution of the Community College Reform Agenda in Massachusetts During the past six or seven years, Massachusetts and its community colleges have embarked on a journey to improve the performance of the state s community colleges for its students and the businesses and organizations that employ them. The state has mobilized around an ambitious agenda for increased credential completion and smoother transfer for community college students and a greater contribution from the community colleges to the state s economic well-being and future. It hasn t been a straight line. There have been disagreements and false starts, but the commitment and progress have accelerated. The story is instructive: effective change takes time; a foundation of trust and working relationships among potential allies must be built over time; incentives and rewards for innovation must be established. Then, there have to be people in positions of influence who have a deep understanding of specific, evidence-based solutions or promising innovations that can be implemented efficiently and at large scale across the state. For years, it can look as if little is happening and progress is stalled, but when the conditions necessary for reform fall into place, the speed of innovation and change can be surprisingly quick. In 2007, Massachusetts applied for and became one of 15 states participating in Achieving the Dream, an ambitious national effort to help community colleges improve student success and use data on student performance to develop specific, targeted strategies to improve persistence and completion. Four colleges in the state were selected to participate, and the state created a policy team led by the Massachusetts Department of Higher Education and supported by Jobs for the Future to develop and share strategies with other states for accelerating improvement across all its community colleges. 1 That same year, the Boston Foundation raised the visibility of the community colleges in Massachusetts with a report describing their importance to the state, its residents and businesses and the need for serious improvement if their potential was to be realized. 2 The Boston Globe raised the stakes with a front-page article publicizing the low completion rates of the state s community colleges. Momentum for significant change was beginning to take shape. The four Achieving the Dream colleges began collecting, reporting publicly and comparing data on student progression and completion. They identified innovations they would test, most of them having to do with developmental education or first year courses. In January of 2009, Governor Deval Patrick appointed Richard Freeland to be the Commissioner of the Department of Higher Education. The Department created a School-to-College Database from which reports were generated that detailed how public school graduates performed at Massachusetts s college campuses. The Department developed a comprehensive community college success measure and incorporated it into community college annual performance reporting. It also launched the MassTransfer policy effort to help students navigate the complexities of transfer from twoto four-year institutions. The Achieving the Dream colleges pilot projects began to demonstrate improved outcomes, and the Department of Higher Education and the Massachusetts Community College Executive Office (MCCEO) took steps to help innovative approaches spread to other colleges. In 2009, MCCEO completed an exhaustive 15-month audit of developmental education policies and practices across the state s community colleges, the first such attempt to look at the system as a whole and to identify promising practices at the state s campuses. 3 The deep recession of the next few years resulted in great challenges and some setbacks. Funding for the database project and an innovative K-12/higher educa- Stepping Up: Building on the Momentum to Improve Student Success in Massachusetts Community Colleges 13

16 tion dual enrollment program was dropped from the budget. Community college enrollments shot up as adults who were underemployed or unemployed decided to gain new education and skills, while state investments did not keep pace. Institutions struggled to adjust to new realities. But the seeds had been sown for a concerted effort to drive the student success and completion agenda. In early 2010, Massachusetts joined Complete College America (CCA) and signed on to its agenda for policy action to increase completion rates for two- and fouryear public institutions. 4 The Department of Higher Education, the lead agency for both Achieving the Dream and CCA, drew resources and support from both initiatives and used them as the foundation for the launch of a high visibility campaign to improve the quality and outcomes of public higher education. In the fall of 2010, the Board of Higher Education approved a new public higher education agenda for Massachusetts: the Vision Project. Its declared goal is to produce the best educated citizenry and workforce in the nation, in response to the intensifying interstate competition for jobs and skills and the growing importance of public education to the Commonwealth s future. Seeking to raise both expectations and accountability for Massachusetts public higher education, the Vision Project is focused on: Improving college readiness, student learning and completion rates; Increasing alignment between academic programs and labor demands; and Reducing achievement gaps among different demographic groups. Led by Commissioner Freeland and the Department of Higher Education, the Vision Project has become the state s organizing umbrella for a set of high-leverage statewide student success initiatives, coordinating and maximizing the energy stemming from efforts such as Achieving the Dream. Its metrics and public reporting of outcomes now guide the institutions. 5 A Performance Incentive Fund managed by the Department has seeded innovations at campuses around the state, involving faculty and leadership in approaches to meeting the state s goals and benchmarks and working to ensure that policy changes gain traction at the institution level. Since 2010, momentum has accelerated further. In November of 2011, the Boston Foundation commissioned and released a second Understanding Boston report highlighting community colleges The Case for Community Colleges: Aligning Higher Education and Workforce Needs in Massachusetts. It called for a more aggressive and unified approach to addressing the mismatch between the middle-skilled jobs that are going unfilled in the Massachusetts economy and the opportunities offered by higher education to prepare workers to fill these needs with a particular focus on community colleges. 6 The report stimulated debates over community college governance, accountability, funding incentives and formulas, and the importance of workforce credentials as well as transfer policy. In his 2012 State of the State address, Governor Deval Patrick proposed a set of reforms that aligned well with the report, among them changes in governance meant to unify the state s community colleges into a more coherent and focused system. Just one week after the Governor spoke, the Boston Foundation convened the Coalition FOR Community Colleges, a diverse group of 62 Massachusetts civic, community and business organizations that want to see community colleges live up to their potential. The Governor s reform package was signed into law in the 2013 budget. Together, these varied efforts have contributed to the current, significant momentum in Massachusetts to adopt new approaches to dramatically improve community college performance and student outcomes. At present: Metrics for assessing and publicly reporting progress across the state s colleges are in place; Governance changes give the Governor and the Commissioner of Higher Education more influence over community college priorities and strategies; Employers encouraged by the state s emphasis on expanding the production of credentials with value in the labor market are establishing closer ties with colleges in their region; The Department of Higher Education is proceeding quickly to address weak outcomes of academically underprepared students through a system-wide redesign of developmental math curricula and programming; 14 Understanding Boston

17 A performance-based funding system required in last year s legislative package is being finalized for inclusion in the 2014 budget, replacing enrollmentdriven funding incentives with a creative approach to rewarding the completion of individual courses and credential programs; A $5 million/year Performance Incentive Fund is targeted for spurring innovative institutional strategies to raise persistence and completion rates; and A database of common course equivalencies is being created by the Department of Higher Education, building on work begun by the colleges an important step toward a much more transparent and simplified transfer system for community college students. Last year, the state s 15 community colleges banded together in a successful application for a $20 million federal grant from the U.S. Department of Labor designed to accelerate the attainment of degrees, certificates and industry-credentials among low-income, low-skill adults across all 15 schools an initiative titled the Massachusetts Community Colleges and Workforce Development Transformation Agenda. 7 That the state s colleges competed successfully is itself confirmation that a new era is upon the Commonwealth one focused on better outcomes, the relationship between higher education and the economy, transformation rather than small pilot projects, and an increasingly unified vision for the future across institutions, systems and sectors. It is this new era that the next phase of community college reform must promote and accelerate across Massachusetts. Where Does Massachusetts Stand in Community College Outcomes? Massachusetts is frequently touted as a high-flying education state, a national leader. That is more true in K-12 than in public higher education. In the 2011 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), Massachusetts eighth graders not only scored best in the U.S. but also among the best when compared with students from other countries. In the National Assessment of Educational Progress given to U.S. students in 4th and 8th grades, Massachusetts students regularly outperform their peers from other states (though serious achievement gaps exist in Massachusetts between white and Asian students and their Black and Hispanic peers). 8 However, when it comes to metrics related to community college enrollment, persistence and completion, Massachusetts sits squarely in the middle of the pack. According to the Vision Project, while Massachusetts is a leader nationally in college readiness, the disparity in college enrollment rates between whites and both African Americans and Hispanics is close to the national average: a 10 percent African-American/white enrollment differential and a 21 percent Hispanic/white gap. When Massachusetts students get to community college, 65 percent require remedial education in either math or reading, a figure that is right around the national average. 9 For the federal government s three-year IPEDS graduation rate for community college degree students, Massachusetts institutions place 30th in the nation. 10 In a study of nine Achieving the Dream states that submitted statewide information on six-year success rates for community college students (i.e., the percent of students who, six years after initial enrollment, had completed a degree or certificate, transferred with or without a credential, or are still enrolled with 30 or more credits earned), Massachusetts students success rate was 45 percent, just above the comparative average of 42 percent, but far below the leading state s 58 percent rate. 11 In the coming years, demographic changes in Massachusetts will make it difficult to raise completion rates markedly through incremental, modest improvements. Between 2000 and 2010, all population growth in the Commonwealth was due solely to the growth of the Hispanic population, a 46 percent increase over Figure 2 Achieving the Dream Six-Year Success Rate for Community Colleges Leading State Massachusetts Average of Comparison States 42% 45% 58% 30% 40% 50% 60% Cohort: First-time degree-seeking students entering in Fall 2003; measure examines their rate of success by September Source: Massachusetts Department of Higher Education Stepping Up: Building on the Momentum to Improve Student Success in Massachusetts Community Colleges 15

18 the course of the decade. This pattern is expected to continue for the foreseeable future. 13 Given the relative youthfulness of the Hispanic population, the impacts are particularly pronounced in the education system: while Hispanics comprise just under 10 percent of the state s population, they make up almost 15 percent of public K-12 students in the state. And they make up an increasingly important segment of the college-going population across the state. Further, the concentration of Hispanics in certain metro areas (close to 40 percent in Lawrence and Springfield; more than 20 percent in Worcester, Chelsea-Revere and Holyoke-Chicopee) means that the higher education institutions that serve this population disproportionately the non-selective institutions and particularly the community colleges can only succeed if their Hispanic students succeed. 14 Thus, the reform progress of the past few years is increasingly necessary but also insufficient. Our institutions must leapfrog their peers to achieve much better outcomes for an increasingly diverse and at-risk population of students and an increasingly demanding community of employers. Bold action is needed:if the performance of our community colleges remains only average and uneven, it will become increasingly difficult for Massachusetts to compete in the global economy. Unfortunately, if nothing changes in Massachusetts community colleges except the demographics of their students, overall persistence and completion rates will likely drop rather than rise. Achievement gaps between Hispanic and other populations in Massachusetts colleges in terms of the academic proficiency of high school seniors and progression and on-time completion of college are quite high and are higher than in many states. The college readiness gap is about percentage points between white and Hispanic twelfth graders. White students community college graduation rates are more than double those of Hispanics; Massachusetts Hispanics graduate at a rate of only 8.6 percent, 35th among the 40 states with more than one public community college. 15 For many years, public higher education in Massachusetts was not seen as especially critical to the state s economic prospects, given the concentration of private institutions in the state. But that has changed dramatically. In 1967, only three out of 10 Massachusetts undergraduates attended public rather than private colleges or universities. That proportion has almost doubled: Today, more than half of all Massachusetts undergraduates attend public two- and four-year institutions in this state. Among associate degree holders, three out of four earned their credentials in-state Understanding Boston

19 CHAPTER two Emerging National Consensus on Next Steps to Improve Student Outcomes As Massachusetts has pursued community college reform, it has had some good company. Across the country, innovative colleges and state higher education systems have been testing different approaches to improving student persistence and attainment, with a particular focus on affordable strategies to increase the skills and economic prospects of low-income and underprepared youth and adults. It is still early in this movement to improve community college outcomes. As a nation, we don t yet have all the answers when we ask what a high performing community college system will look like and, in particular, how a more efficient, effective system will be structured and will operate. However, research and experience with strategies to improve community college performance and reduce achievement gaps are already yielding a broad consensus on priorities for the next phase of this crucial national effort. Fortunately, this consensus is consistent with lessons learned and progress made in Massachusetts to date. The core of this emerging consensus is this: 1. Small boutique programs and pilot projects that reach a small segment of an institution s or a state s community college students cannot generate large-scale improvement. This is the overall lesson from the first phase of Achieving the Dream nationally, among other reform initiatives. 17 Dramatically improved results require strategies that are built into the fabric and the general operations of an institution, reaching the typical student, not the exceptional one. Examples include changes in the orientation or advising system for all incoming students or the redesign of the general education core curriculum to make transfer of credits easier for most students. Small pilots may be necessary to test particular innovations, but large-scale reform rarely proceeds from the expansion of pilots. Real depth in improvement requires broad, ambitious changes in policies and practices that break with business as usual and are built from the outset to reach large numbers of students. 2. The front end of the college experience assessment and placement, orientation and advising, developmental education, initial course selection and success is a critical area for improvement. Too many community college students enroll underprepared for college success, both academically and in terms of college navigation and study skills. Another large group of students that may or may not be academically unprepared for college-level work enroll with little or no direction or sense of what they want to accomplish in or after college. 18 Any successful redesign must address both these challenges head-on. Redesign of students early experiences, including basic skills mastery, needs to decrease the unstructured confusion of options available to students, accelerate student enrollment and success in credit courses that are gateways to college majors, and incentivize choices and behaviors that maximize early momentum and success. These redesign principles draw from behavioral economics lessons about human reactions to too much choice, and from the reality that Students don t do optional, as the Director of the Community College Survey of Student Engagement Kay McClenney puts it. For students with little confidence in their ability to succeed in college which may be the majority of community college students, given their past experiences in school success breeds success. Colleges need to put this lesson at the core of the ways in which they organize the first year experience for students. 3. At the same time, getting students over the initial hump is not sufficient. Redesign of the community college experience must address loss points across the entire college experience. Students who don t earn a credential or transfer to another college drop out at many different points along the way, not just in response to their early experiences. The longer Stepping Up: Building on the Momentum to Improve Student Success in Massachusetts Community Colleges 17

20 students take to find their way and plan for success, the more likely they are to give up at some point before they meet their goals. As Uri Treisman of the University of Texas at Austin puts it, the danger of focusing only on reforming developmental education or the first year without attention to the redesign of college programs and pathways can be like building a six-lane highway into a swamp. The growing national consensus is that college offerings and student decisions need to be reverseengineered from the ultimate goal students have for themselves: employment that leads to a sustainable career or transfer to further education for a credential that will open up additional career opportunities. What do employers in particular fields want from entry-level skilled employees? How can colleges revise curricula, program sequences and student experiences to be more relevant and attractive to employers in high demand fields? Attention to the endpoint of, not just the entry into, community college provides important common ground for educational leaders, business interests and state officials. An Emerging Consensus Boutique programs and pilot projects that reach a small segment of an institution s or a state s community college students cannot generate large-scale improvement or dramatically different performance. The front end of the college experience is a critical area for improved processes, new approaches and innovation. Getting students over the initial hump, i.e., the first year and developmental education, is not enough. Institutional and program redesign must address the entire community college experience. This emerging national consensus (see sidebar) has been greatly influenced by a steady stream of recent research, much of it generated by the Community College Research Center at Teachers College, Columbia University, as well as MDRC in New York and the Institute for Higher Education Leadership and Policy in California. Carefully designed and creatively executed, this research has been instrumental in helping practitioners and policymakers coalesce around the assertions summarized above. In particular, this emerging body of research has highlighted three interrelated challenges and obstacles to student success: The weak performance of and high attrition rate from traditional developmental education courses and programs; Serious flaws in the way that students are assessed and placed into remediation or college-level courses; and The high cost of the current laissez-faire approach to structuring students choices of program and plans for succeeding in and after college. Leading edge colleges and states around the country are creating and adopting solutions to these three challenges that can be implemented on a large scale. High Attrition in Developmental Education Sequence In recent years, research on the progress and completion rates of entering community college students who are not ready for college-level work has forced colleges and policymakers alike to take a hard look at the efficacy of traditional remedial programming. This emerging body of research, based on careful longitudinal studies of students as they move through postsecondary institutions, identifies a serious attrition problem: too few students who start in developmental education courses ever finish their sequences, go on to take the first credit courses in math or English, or complete a degree or certificate. The numbers are sobering. Studies estimate that between 60 and 70 percent of community college students take at least one remedial math or English course. Of these students, only about one in four graduate within eight years. 19 The majority of students who are referred to remedial education do not even complete the remedial sequence, never mind continue on to earn a credential. A recent study from the Community College Research Center found that 46 percent of students completed their remedial sequence in reading and only 33 percent completed it in math Understanding Boston